Abstract

Physicalism is frequently understood as the thesis that everything depends upon a fundamental physical level. This standard formulation of physicalism has a rarely noted and arguably unacceptable consequence—it makes physicalism come out false in worlds which have no fundamental level, for instance worlds containing things which can infinitely decompose into smaller and smaller parts. If physicalism is false, it should not be for this reason. Thus far, there is only one proposed solution to this problem, and it comes from the so-called via negativa account of physicalism. Via negativa physicalism identifies the physical with the non-mental, such that if everything in the world ultimately depends only on non-mental things, then physicalism is true. To deal with the possibility of worlds without a fundamental level, this account says that physicalism is false in worlds with either a fundamental mental level or an infinite descent of mental levels. Here I argue that there could be a world with an infinite descent of all-mental levels, yet in which physicalism might plausibly be true—thus contradicting the sufficient-for-false condition meant to save physicalism from the threat of infinitely decomposable worlds. This leaves the need for a new dependence-based account of physicalism.